Abstract: A connection integrity monitor is provided wherein, for large switch fabrics (connection circuits), gate usage and power requirements are reduced by a value approaching 50% when compared to a previously disclosed connection integrity monitor. Rather than simultaneously monitoring the connectivity of all outputs of the switch fabric, thus completely duplicating the switch fabric, the connection integrity monitor monitors only one connection at a time. Therefore, redundancy is reduced from M to 1. The connection integrity monitor can be provisioned statically to monitor any one of the output connections or arranged so that all connections can be monitored, although not simultaneously.

Abstract: A system for transparently transporting m synchronous data streams as an aggregate data stream on a single channel of a Wave Division Multiplexed (WDM) optical link without pointer processing uses m unique encoding schemes to enable recovery of the respective m data streams from the aggregate data stream. The encoding schemes are preferably self-inverting. The respective m data streams are parsed into data units and encoded. The data units are then interleaved to form the aggregate data stream. Recovery is accomplished using a reverse process.

Abstract: A system for transparently transporting m synchronous data streams as an aggregate data stream on a single channel of a Wave Division Multiplexed (WDM) optical link without pointer processing uses m unique encoding schemes to enable recovery of the respective m data streams from the aggregate data stream. The encoding schemes are preferably self-inverting. The respective m data streams are parsed into data units and encoded. The data units are then interleaved to form the aggregate data stream. Recovery is accomplished using a reverse process.